Be fair to politicians, Vaz tells media
Published:Tuesday | July 19, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Daraine Luton, Senior Staff Reporter
MINISTER with responsibility for information Daryl Vaz has urged the local media to be fair to politicians, saying their jobs should not make them fair game for unethical journalism.
"A politician should not be defamed, maligned, and stereotyped just because he is a politician," Vaz said.
He was speaking at a Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) 'Media in Democracy' seminar at the Knutsford Court Hotel in New Kingston. The seminar is focusing on understanding the crucial role media play in Caribbean democracies.
Vaz acknowledged that media have a critical role in "doing the necessary work of holding the politicians' feet to the fire", but said the press must put its house in order.
Pointing to the need to be fair to politicians, Vaz said they have the right to protection from prejudice, just like any other citizen.
"(A politician) has a right to fairness, objectivity, and balance in any reporting concerning him," the minister said.
Vaz also chided the Press Association of Jamaica (PAJ) for not delivering on a commitment to have in place a media complaints council to police a media code of ethics.
No self-policing press
"Years after the PAJ itself did some very fine work on a code of conduct and justifying the need for a press council, we still do not have this self-policing group," he noted.
"There are many who don't have the means to sue for libel. Some are maligned, ridiculed, tastelessly depicted, or stereotyped, and they have no press council to which to appeal to get justice," he added.
The minister told the seminar that it was important that the press recognise that it not only has rights, but responsibilities.
"For, as the News of the World scandal graphically illustrates, the press can have its own narrow, self-centred, and even corrupt interests, too," Vaz said.
The News of the World, England's best-selling tabloid, was forced to close its operations two weeks ago after admitting to phone-hacking of politicians, celebrities, and the victims of terror attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The information minister, who boasted that the Bruce Golding-led Government had done much to provide greater access to information, pointed out that the administration was moving to reform an inherited century-old libel law which has been sent by the Cabinet to the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel for drafting.
The minister, however, is adamant that media should not be given free rein to say anything about anyone.
"No democratic society can afford to give any one interest group any sacrosanct status. The press must have checks and balances, too. It can't just insist on them for everybody else while exempting itself," Vaz said.